after the storm
by shriveledwankclaw
Summary: I wish, she thinks, that I had loved you instead. But it is Marius she chases.


She is two, she is three, four, five, six, seven, eight… and Éponine Thénardier is a _lady, _always a lady, a little doll. Or, well, she's told so - for awhile, at least. Up until the age of nine, Éponine is a lady. (Really, though, she's no lady - she's the stuck-up, spoiled daughter of innkeepers who are no better than grave robbers.) She's encouraged to turn up her nose, to smile, to bat her eyelashes and be a little doll. Her Mother dresses her up, kissing her nose and playing with her curls. Éponine isn't ever sure if she feels pretty, but she's told she is. It's meant to count for something, but she's not sure what.

Her Mother stops telling her she's a little lady, a darling _poupée_, when she is twelve. Her Father had long since stopped kissing her on the tip of her nose, though she doesn't mind; the whiskers above his lip always tickled her face, scratching away at her soft skin.

She meets Marius Pontmercy, the grandson of Monsieur Gillenormand, when she is thirteen. She is still curved with the flesh of her youth, her cheeks rosy. They walk together and he talks to her casually, as though she is one of his boyhood friends. People look at the two of them as they walk - the grandson of a rich man and the daughter of crooks, of beggars. Marius doesn't seem to notice their eyes following them - or doesn't care. Either way, Éponine latches onto him, onto the fact that he doesn't mind how people look at the two of them.

She turns fourteen. Éponine and Marius still walk together, and her game of pretend begins. She pretends their friendly walks are courtship. (It's quite easy, really, if she purposely misinteprets all his words.) She grows skinnier as the game goes on. Her skin isn't as soft, either. Callouses beginning to mock her on the soles of her now bare-feet, on the tips of her fingers and on the once-soft muscle of her palm. The pretending doesn't smooth out her fingertips, but it does warm her up. Éponine Thénardier thinks maybe she inherited her skill of playing pretend from her parents - for the first time since she was a pretty porcelain doll, she's thankful for them.

Éponine Thénardier is fifteen and her legs grow skinnier, her waist shrinking. Her Mother steals a belt for her - the old one was too big. Her bones protrude, her wrists growing smaller. Éponine Thénardier crouches in the dark, fingertips fumbling along the lines of her ribs, the curves of her hipbone. She knocks her knuckles against her collarbone to the beat of her Father's footsteps, the buckles on his shoes clinking against their unstable floorboards. There are slivers in her feet, layers of dirt covering the skin that was so smooth.

Éponine Thénardier turns sixteen, and lays down on her side at night, resting her own left hand on her right hip. She grips at her hip, her waist, and pretends it is Marius Pontmercy's hand grabbing at her, not able to get enough of her - though there isn't much of her, even in her imagination. She lives less with her parents. Marius becomes a student (moreso a rebel, though), and he is all so casual about her visiting him at what can only be defined as inappropriate hours. She tastes his name in the darkness of Paris' streets, and the sound of it is so rich it nearly fills her empty stomach. Marius sees Cosette, the child mocked and abused by Éponine and her parents, and she tries to hold onto him as his mind holds onto Cosette. _No_, she thinks. _Don't love her, never her, I was here, I loved you, I love you, me, I did, I_ -

But Marius asks her to find Cosette for her, and he smiles and she can't say no, could never, ever say no. She's not sure about the logic her actions hold - introducing Marius to Cosette, enabling their relationship but stealing away Cosette's letter - but thought it likely the madness brought on by hunger, by cold, by the red, raw skin left on her cheek from her Father's slap. Cosette got her man in the yellow jacket as a child, the man serving as a Father taking her away from the cold, from the hunger, from the tears. Wasn't Marius her man in the yellow jacket? He was meant to be, she thinks, he was. He was Éponine's way out, and he floats away from her, chasing after Cosette as fast as he can. Even in her dreams and hallucinations, he is running away from her, chasing someone softer to smooth out her hardness.

Marius' friend, Enjolras, the leader of the sure-to-fail revolution, looks at her whenever she fetches Marius with a look of pity in his eye. He's not the pitying type, she knows, but it's the only word for the look in his eye. Usually, Éponine glances away when she sees the schoolboy staring at her, but once or twice, she stares back, her eyes bright. _I wish_, she thinks, _that I had loved you instead_. After all, it is Éponine, skinny and cold, and her people that this schoolboy is running to his death for. But it is Marius she chases, Marius who she acts as an errand-girl for, Marius she pretends to dance with barefoot in the darkness of Paris' cold streets. No matter how her mind wishes she'd chosen another to wear that yellow jacket.

Éponine binds her breasts so tight she nearly chokes, pulling her hair into a cap, covering up her skinny hips with loose fitting clothes. The jacket she pulls over her shoulders is nearly warm, and she revels in it, pretending it belongs to Marius, that it is yellow, that it's his warmth thawing out her bones. Éponine Thenadiér is so far away from the little lady she was, so far from the darling girl adored by her parents. She goes to the barricade bravely, sure that it will be where both she and Marius die. But even when her wildest dreams come true - he's going to be shot, he'll be shot and I will die, too, and we will be together - she can't stand to watch him die. Éponine Thenadiér grabs the gun pointed at Marius' head - it's just about ready to shoot his brains out - and points it right at her chest. She thinks, maybe, that she could've pointed it upward to the sky, or down. It didn't have to shoot her. But maybe the girl, skinny and bound and starving and so cold, wanted to die.

Éponine Thenadiér is dying and the lines between her and Marius Pontmercy blur, with the blood, deep red and thick, leaking from her chest, right by her heart (she'd think it funny, nearly ironic if she wasn't dying) staining his hands, his shirt. She finally leaves her mark on him, is finally seen. Éponine Thenardiér is held by a boy with skinny arms and a quivering voice, and he cries and she is so happy that he is crying, she can barely contain it. Éponine Thenardiér slowly - or quickly, maybe - dies in the arms of a boy adored and she is so happy, though her lungs seize and her muscles burn. She doesn't even mind all that much that she isn't able to reach up to kiss him, but she's not sure she likes dying with the knowledge that her brother was watching, that Enjolras saw.

Her last words in the world are about flowers, about rain, about new beginnings and love and _letitbe_, _justholdmenow_. It's quite the legacy to leave the world with. She dies with the knowledge that Marius doesn't, couldn't ever, love her, but he plays pretend with her as she goes, singing her to sleep.

Éponine Thenadiér wakes up somewhere else - somewhere better - and Marius is not there, is not dead. For a few days - maybe weeks - she screams his name, pulling at her own hair. _Marius, Marius, Marius_. But Gavroche is in this better place, as are the rest of Marius' friends. She walks through the streets, her once ragged dress full and warm, her ribs covered by the softness of her new flesh. She sees Enjolras, the boy she wished she loved, and his eyes aren't filled with pity, really, though the new emotion in them isn't something she knows by name.

Enjolras stares at her for a few moments longer. Éponine Thenadiér rises to the challenge, her eyes set on him. The old game of theirs is comforting in this better place.

She wishes, again, that she loved this boy, the one in front of her.

Enjolras smiles at her, and without thinking, without meaning to, Éponine Thenadiér smiles back.


End file.
